Entries Tagged 'Corruption' ↓

Over many decades of sports watching, I’ve become more and more suspicious about the NFL and NBA referees and coaches with each passing year, growing ever surer that there is gigantic game-fixing going on—with no limits on betting that take poor schmucks to the cleaners. It’s billions of dollars we’re talking about. It’s way more than baseball or horse racing betting! It’s Las Vegas gone amok.

Earlier this year I watched a San Antonio Spurs vs Golden State Warriors basketball game. Right at the end Derrick White was flailing and so were the other great three point shooters in that team.

The Spurs have beaten a lot of great teams this year but always seemed to peter out at the end and they remain at the bottom of the Western league. Even the Golden State announcers commented about this on TV!

Early this year I learned the word for what I observed in many of those games. Continue reading →

 Today as the January 6th committee takes a two week break from TV after this last show on Tuesday June 28th, I was surprised to learn that there was news of actual voter fraud this year on June 6th, 2022.

I was alerted to this truly real voter fraud by my step-sister who lives in Pennsylvania.

In the Eastern District of Pennsylvania there really were three people charged with being involved in fraud, bribery, in a conspiracy to deprive voters of civil rights, obstruction of justice, falsification of voter records and other fraudulent practices on June 6, 2022.

(1) Former U.S. Congressman Michael “Ozzie”Myers   was charged with stuffing ballot boxes for specific Democratic candidates in the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 Pennsylvania elections.

(2) Domenick J. Demuro, was in charge of the 39th Ward, 36th Division in Philly. Demuro’s title was Judge of Elections. Ozzie Myers admitted to bribing Dominic Demuro to illegally add fake votes for certain candidates of their party in the primary elections— some of whom were running for judicial appointments. Domenick got between $400 to $5,000 per election when he practiced “ringing up” the fake votes for Myers’ candidates on Election days, and then certified after the Election that the votes he added were accurate.

(3) Marie Beren was the third fraudster that Myers also admitted to conspiring to commit election fraud with. She was a former Judge of Elections for the 39th Ward, 2nd Division in South Philadelphia. On Election days Myers would give Beren instructions over his cellphone about giving votes to his favored candidates while the voting was going on. Beren and her cohorts then would falsify Polling Books and the List of Voters and Party Enrollment for the 39th, careful to make sure their cheating after the elections would be certified and match the books.

I have many things to say about these people – first of all they were in cahoots, and there were only three of them. But secondly, there was a significant amount of money involved and a lot of fake ballots added to vote counts.

These three fraudsters did not operate like those talked about on TV news programs during 2020. The TV news I saw was focused on people who filled out a second ballot of a deceased relative. Or people who offered to help seniors and then filled in their ballots differently than the individual they collected ballots from wished. Or those who singled out the race of voters they wanted block from counting.

But these three real voter fraudulant individuals in Philadelphia started in 2014 and only made it to 2018 using old fashioned methods like those elections where Americans in the last century used only  paper and pencil.

For those cynics in this century who think there will be no justice done after the January Sixth Committee finishes its work, please think again. The Pennsylvania State Police, the FBI and the Department of Justice did catch these three individuals. All three of the Philly vote fraudsters entered their guilty pleas in court on June 6, 2022.

The Supreme Court may abuse their power and harken backward to the past today, but we cannot afford to harken backward to the days of the early 20th century when political bosses ruled, and paper ballots carried around in wooden boxes made large amounts of voter fraud easier to do. We need the Federal Government to protect voting in every state and make how they secure elections more transparent. And we need them to do this quickly.

It’s truly shocking that all three of these three trusted people were the top insiders in charge for the voting systems they were supposed to protect in their districts. Clearly every State in the Union needs to upgrade their security before our next elections. The wolves were inside the hen house not the lowly volunteer election officials being pilloried today.

No one who is in charge of the people processing votes should be allowed near a voting machine unless they have a proctor overseeing them file only their own personal votes in that election. That practice should go up to the State’s Secretary of State levels and be verified by our Federal Government officials

And I hope too that the January Sixth Committee will take a look at how these three got away with voter fraud for five years in a row!

Source: The United States Department of Justice Office EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA

Many people feel that corporations can do better than governments in pricing public projects. And that’s true to an extent.

The problem is that big corporations can set prices above the true market prices of those services. As long as consumers can pay for public services (e.g., mailing packages, using electric power, and gas, mining valuable resources, etc. ) everything works well.

But what about those who cannot afford privatized services. They are not represented in the true market price of those public services. Those without enough money or credit to pay for privately made goods and services cannot “vote” on the type of goods or services they need.

Everything is traded in money markets now. This is why corporations have become so huge in this country and individual’s income so unequal. And worse, privatization is likely to end in in more illnesses and death to human beings than public services.

Consider the case in Texas this year where Texas’ uncooperative privatized power companies failed and people froze to death.

While Senator Cruz flew South to warmer climates, New York Representative Ocasio-Cortez flew South to Texas to launch a charitable fund drive to turn Texan’s power back on. And now there is the legislative push in Texas to interfere with women’s health care rights as well as well as make voting for quality government leaders harder for millions of people.

Also take the case of Greece a few years ago. While deeply in debt, that country was forced by the IMF to sell its valuable public services to vulture capitalists who could buy up all they desired. The Greek government was stripped of airports, public transportation and other basic infrastructure, as well extractions of its valuable resources so that investors in other countries in the world could grow rich—while the Greek people grew ever poorer.

Right now, the exit of France’s IMF leader, Christine Lagarde, to head the European Central Bank, the new head of the IMG has split the IMF’s Board by having favored China over the U.S. in the global trade wars. In particular, China is leading the world in the electric battery development and selling cars to Norway. And China has no shortage of workers like the U.S. does.

Here is an example of a government-controlled country that is far ahead of the U.S. in technology. It’s a government that isn’t going waste money like U.S. billionaires do to offer joy rides to civilians to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. China is building its infrastructure not only inside but also outside of its territory to help repair transportation routes through Central and Southern Asian countries for trade.

Privatization gets kudos for being more efficient than government, but as President Dwight D. Eisenhower once asked, is it more efficacious? More effective? No it is not!

For example, recently in the U.S. there was the privatization of ICE facilities and prisons that resulted in utter failures to treat citizens and border immigrants alike with humanitarian rights. Rapes, family disintegration, and unhygenic practices have horrified viewers who watch on TV the stripping of human beings of all dignity.

Vulture capitalists who are getting rich off of privatizing public goods and services are in it for the money; they do not have to care about what happens to the victims of their services.

These people pay lobbyists in all levels of our governments to satiate their greed with our blood. This results in massive corruption and neglect when those greedy people and their minions take over formerly democratic governments.

Not to mention lavish tax breaks for the rich and skyrocketing (literally nowadays) income inequality.

Privatization can be a good thing, but only if the institutions it builds have people with integrity running the show. No amount of truly free markets that serve everyone can exist unless the “good guys” are in charge. That was why Adam Smith posited that there must be an “invisible hand [of God]” behind free markets. But his days are long gone—well over 200 years gone.

During the Great Financial Recession and afterwards we have learned what happens when people without integrity are put in charge. Twelve years later it feels to me like Covid is not the only virus that was launched in the world this century. Both sicknesses are going to take a long time to control – if ever gotten under control.